Yammer builds its own box

Yammer, the San Francisco startup building a Facebook for the enterprise, is adding a big feature to the “social layer” it’s building for businesses: storage and collaboration.

The company said today that it has acquired OneDrum, a 10-person Scottish company that makes file-syncing software for businesses. In practice, it looks a lot like better-known competitors Dropbox: installing OneDrum adds a folder to your desktop, which you can share with your colleagues and exchange files as needed. It also integrates with Microsoft Office so that workers can edit documents simultaneously.

Yammer already integrates with a raft of cloud storage companies, including Dropbox, Box and Google Docs. But the feature is important enough to collaboration that Yammer wanted to have its own offering, Yammer CEO David Sacks said.

“There are a couple common pieces you really just need to be that social layer within enterprise apps,” he said. “Conversation is probably the most important. But content is another shared element across the enterprise.”

As part of the acquisition, OneDrum — which started a pilot program last year and has not been widely available — will shut down. Its technology will be integrated into Yammer, with desktop file synchronization coming in the summer and the Office collaboration tool following this fall.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the parties said it was less than the $1 billion Facebook paid for Instagram.

The OneDrum team also plans to move to San Francisco — “so we can enjoy more clouds,” founder Jasper Westaway said.